Especially if you are in the hospital, says Dr. Ely Bartal, CEO of Kansas Surgery & Recovery Center.

"What the customer wants is privacy, to have their own space. When family comes in, they want their own space with four walls," he says.

That's why the specialty hospital and others in Wichita are building single-patient rooms. And not only are they private, but some also come with amenities like flat-screen televisions, room service-like dining and DVDs that can be checked out by patients.

"There are two components in hospitals," Bartal says. "There's the health care component. And there's the hotel component."

That's especially true in specialty hospitals that provide mostly elective surgeries and where patients today have plenty of choices.

"Most of these people are not dying," says Dr. Joseph Galichia, founder of Galichia Heart Hospital. So they might as well be able to enjoy themselves, he says.

Galichia's hospital was built in 2002 with all private rooms. There are 82 of them today, all with recliners that fold out to allow families to stay with patients overnight. The hospital also provides a concierge service to help patients.

Galichia says he's always been annoyed at semiprivate rooms and how conversations about medical care so easily can be overheard.

"From day one, we wanted private rooms. There wasn't any consideration about doing anything else," Galichia says. "What we're shooting for is a five-star hotel."

Wesley Medical Center in May will begin a $43 million renovation project, part of which will consist of altering all the rooms on the 10th floor of the hospital's tower to create 36 private rooms for general surgical patients.

Currently, about half the hospital's rooms are private, but many of those are in specialty areas.

"All hospitals need more private rooms," says Sam Serrill, chief operating officer at Wesley. "The standard of care we all want when we enter a hospital is private rooms."

Kansas Surgery and Recovery Center opened its doors in 1995 with all semiprivate rooms where two beds were separated by a curtain. That was how it always had been done in the past, says Bartal.

There used to be a time where hospital wards contained 40 or 50 beds, he says. Then there were rooms with six beds separated by curtains. And then two.

The trend continues downward, and Bartal says it has nothing to do with the sharpening competition among hospitals.

"I don't think it's competition," Bartal says. "I think it's demand from the public. Do you want to share a room with someone when you're sick, or with someone who is moaning? No one wants to."

In later additions to his hospital, Bartal added private rooms. Currently, the facility on North Webb Road has 12 private rooms and 10 semiprivate ones.

The hospital has several hundred DVDs that patients and their families may check out. It recently replaced all its old televisions with flat-screen monitors. And food can be served at any time during the day, rather than at set meal times.

"If I had to build it all over again, I'd do only private rooms," Bartal says.

The Cost

But there is a cost -- both to the hospital in needing more space for a smaller number of beds and to the customers.

Private rooms at Kansas Surgery and Recovery Center cost $650 per night, which is $50 more than semiprivate rooms.

But the hospital says it sometimes experiences a shortage of private rooms because of high demand.

At Wesley Medical Center, the lodging also will trend upscale. DVDs might not be available for checkout, but each room will have a flat-screen television. Private rooms won't cost any more than semiprivate rooms.

But Wesley officials say the private-room push also has a legal component.

"We are covered by HIPAA," says Helen Thomas, the hospital's director of marketing and public relations, referring to the federal medical privacy law. "Incidental information (that is passed during conversations in a semi-private room) has been deemed OK. But it's not ideal."